Not sure whether to ask this in here or the drives section, as it affects both.

When you research antimatter, does it upgrade thee drives automatically, or do you have to research to new drive tech to benefit from AM? Currently playing Liir, and there is no distinction between Fusion Stutterwarp and AM Stutterwarp, as was in Prime.

Delphineas wrote:Not sure whether to ask this in here or the drives section, as it affects both.

When you research antimatter, does it upgrade thee drives automatically, or do you have to research to new drive tech to benefit from AM? Currently playing Liir, and there is no distinction between Fusion Stutterwarp and AM Stutterwarp, as was in Prime.

There should be some change. Range would be the biggest. Maybe a minor speed bump up but that could be race dependent.

Stutter Warp engines are Fusion only, they don't have a antimatter stutter warp upgrade. Instead once antimatter is researched, you can research and build Flicker Warp (which are antimatter only). Then there is one Antimatter engine upgrade, the Curvature Compensating Flicker Warp.

This is similar to the Morrigi with the Void Carver (Fusion only), Void Mastery (Antimatter only) and Void Blade (AM engine upgrade).

The Tarka follow a similar pattern, but have to be different and use the same name for their energy era drives. So you get Fusion Shaped Hyperfield (Fusion only), Antimatter Shaped Hyperfield (Antimatter only) and Antimatter Warp (AM engine upgrade).

And it seems only the Humans really have both their drive types in both the energy eras. They have both Node Focus Fusion and Node Pathing Fusion then move to both Node Focus Antimatter and Node Pathing Antimatter. No additional AM engine upgrade though.

not really ignored as much as its not really a question or addition. As nice as it is, this quarkium is still mass to energy conversion. Most quark based tech in SotS is used to reinforce things. While what you described could indeed make an ultra dense AM warhead, the actual moving of said warhead would be problematical since it would be an order of magnitude more difficult than handling neutronium.